Drawing up a statement for an electricity meter consists in recovering data representative of electricity consumption as measured by the meter, e.g. for the purpose of establishing a bill for the consumption. This operation may be performed by a technician who notes the consumption data displayed by each meter, but several methods are known for reading meters remotely that make it possible to avoid using such a technician.
Each meter is then fitted with a modem in order to set up a connection with a consumption data processing server in order to transfer consumption data from each meter to the server.
The connection used is generally a data transmission connection making use in particular of a wired or mobile telephone type network, which data may be transmitted to the telephone network over various channels.
The data may be transmitted via a channel of a public switched telephone network (PSTN), i.e. over a wired connection using a modem of the type used to connect a computer to an Internet access supplier, generally referred to as a PSTN modem.
The data may also be transmitted over a GMS/Data channel, i.e. via a wireless connection using a modem that is similar to those fitted to mobile telephones of the GMS type (global system for mobile communication). Data transmission then takes place in a manner analogous to transmitting text messages in the short message service (SMS) format.
The data may also be transmitted to the telephone network over a global packet radio service (GPRS) channel, i.e. a connection set up by a high data rate wireless modem of the GPRS type.
Concretely, the consumption data from each meter is transferred meter by meter to the server, since each meter needs to set up a call with the server in order to transfer its data.
In practice, the large number of telephone connections needed for reading all of the isolated meters in a set of meters mobilizes a large fraction of the resources of the server. The resources available for processing the data proper are thus reduced, thereby penalizing the time required for processing all of the consumption data.